Peggy Cass
Mary Margaret "Peggy" Cass (born May 21, 1924; died March 8, 1999) was an American actress, comedian, game show panelist and announcer. Early Life A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Cass became interested in acting as a member of the drama club a Cambridge Latin School; however, she attended all of high school without a speaking part. After graduating from high school, Cass spent most of the 1940s in search of an acting career, eventually landing Jan Sterling's role in a traveling production of Born Yesterday. Stage and Film Cass made her Broadway debut in 1949 with the play Touch and Go. Remembered today primarily as a regular long-running panelists on To Tell the Truth, Cass was best-known for her performance as Agnes Gooch in Auntie Mame on both Broadway and in the 1958 film version, a role for which she won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress, and later received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Cass was also part of the nine member ensemble cast for the 1950 Broadway revue A Thurber Carnival, adapted by James Thurber from his own works. As "First Woman" (according to the script) she played the mother in The Wolf at the Door, a woman who insisted Macbeth was a murder mystery, the wife Mr. Preble wanted to get rid of, Miss Alma Winege (who wanted to ship Thurber 26 copies of Grandma Was a Nudist) a woman helping to update old poetry, Walter Mitty's wife, and the narrator of The Little Girl and The Wolf. In 1964 she starred as First Lady Martha Dinwiddie Buterfield in the mock-biographical novel First Lady: My Thirty Days in The White House. The book, written by Auntie Mame author Patrick Dennis, included photographs by Cris Alexander of Cass, Dody Goodman, Kaye Ballard and others, portraying the novel's characters. In the late 1960s and early 1970s she replaced other actresses in Don't Drink the Water (as Marion Hollander) and in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite; and played Mollie Malloy in two revival runs of The Front Page. ''She also appeared in the 1969 film comedy ''If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. In the 1980s she returned to the stage in 42nd Street and in the brief 1985 run of The Octette Bridge Club. Television and later years According to Jack Paar, (speaking in retrospect) he felt he may have ruined Cass's Oscar chances by lobbying too much for her on his enormously popular television series The Tonight Show. Cass filled in as announcer for Jack Paar's late night talk show the aired in the 1970s on ABC. In the 1961-1962 season, Cass and Jack Weston costarred in an ABC sitcom, The Hathaways, along with a Marquis Chimps, a chimpanzee showbiz troupe which served as her "children" on the show. The Hathaways ''followed the new adventure series ''Straightaway on ABC, about two young men (John Ashley and Brian Kelly) involved in auto racing, but neither program could compete with CBS's Rawhide starring Clint Eastwood and Eric Fleming. In 1987, Cass was featured in the early FOX sitcom Women in Prison. Aside from sitcoms, she played the role of H. Sweeney on the NBC afternoon soap opera The Doctors from 1978-1979. Aside from her work with Jack Paar, her mot notable television appearances came as a guest on many game shows, mainly shows based in New York City. She was a regular panelists on To Tell the Truth from the 1960s through its 1990 revival, appearing in most episodes in the 1960s and 1970s. She was also a panelists on the pilot of the 1960s version of The Match Game. On Truth and other series, she often displayed near-encyclopedic knowledge of various topics, and would occasionally question the logic of some of the "facts" presented on the program. In 1983, she appeared in the New Amsterdam Theatre Company's concert staging of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash's One Touch of Venus as Mrs. Kramer (opposite Susan Lucci) as her daughter, as well as Lee Roy Reams, Roy Raines and Paige O'Hara as the titular Venus, In the spring of 1991, she participated in a concert staging of Cole Porter's Fifty Million Frenchmen at New York City's French Institute/Alliance Franciase, in the role of Mrs. Glady's Carroll, singing Porter's The Queen of Terre Haute. (Her performance was repeated on 1991 studio cast recording based on the concert staging, appearing alongside Howard McGillin, Susan Powell, Kim Criswell and Karen Ziemba). Personal Life On March 8, 1999, Cass died of heart failure in New York City at the age of 74 at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She was survived by her husband, a former Jesuit preist and educator, Eugene Michael (Gene) Feeney (1924-2013). They had no children. Shows appeared *''To Tell the Truth'' *''What's My Line?'' *''I've Got a Secret'' *''The Price is Right'' *''Missing Links'' *''You're Putting Me On'' *''Keep Talking'' *''The Match Game'' *''Match Game'' *''Password All-Stars'' *''Password Plus'' *''Shoot for the Stars'' *''Chain Reaction'' *''The (New) $25,000 Pyramid'' *''The Movie Masters'' Category:Contestants Category:Match Game Panelists Category:Panelists Category:People Category:Deceased Category:1924 Births Category:1999 Deaths